Episode 6 (Vigilantes)

Over sake at a bar, members of the Abegawa Tenchu Kai chew on the news that the authorities now class them as villains. Tetsu is furious; Rojiya Yonenaga is unbothered, holding that how a man lives is untouched by the era around him, All Might and the rest included. Tetsu drunkenly toasts the sentiment.

Later, at their Danto Ward headquarters, Stendhal comes through the window. The lounge erupts into Quirk fire, all of it missing. He perches on a wall, licks the blood-soaked bandages on his arm guard, and Bloodcurdle locks four men in place for the sword. Three reinforcements arrive and fall just as fast.

Changing in an alley afterward, he is greeted by Kuin Hachisuka, who calls him Mr. Judgement. He corrects her twice, since without the mask he is merely a man, while the alias is something larger: judgment itself, widening the gap between living and dying. Kuin retrieves the blood samples she loaned him and suggests she choose his next mark. He warns her that she qualifies for judgment too, and that until then he is indifferent to stronger vermin eating weaker ones. Undeterred, she hands over photographs of his next targets, pleased he picked Naruhata for his work.

Days on, Moyuru Tochi and Soga Kugisaki visit Rapt Tokage, hospitalized after Mario Kugutsu's rampage threw him into a building. Smoking outside, Rapt says he leaves that weekend. Moyuru credits his Lizard regeneration and the Trigger he took; Rapt gives the drug little credit, since the same substance is why he needs a bed at all. Asked about testing his new flight, he declines, having decided that flying is for birds.

That night Kuin meets Soga alone about another Trigger deal and is surprised his friends are absent. Soga says they are not part of it. She reframes Stendhal as a random serial killer the crew ought to fight, and Soga walks away, straight into Stendhal. Kuin offers him one last chance at her supply, noting that Moyuru and Rapt are next once this is finished.

Soga knocks the vials from her hand and readies his Spikes, refusing her help. Disappointed, she releases her bees from her eyepatch, and they sting him repeatedly with Trigger-loaded abdomens. What enrages him is not the pain but her cheerful face as she strolls off, the same expression he has met his whole life: from childhood friends, from people frightened by his Quirk, from teachers, from Koichi Haimawari the day he made him grovel. Convinced that treatment turned him into a monster, he becomes one, swelling into a porcupine-like beast. Stendhal reads it as true colors surfacing and draws his katana.

Koichi arrives on patrol, recognizes both men, and is told to stand aside. He calls the theatrics excessive and proposes something calmer. Soga fires a storm of spikes, Stendhal parries and opens his chest with repeated slashes, and Koichi grasps that the threat was literal. He slides between them, knocks Stendhal back, and flees with Soga, only to take a thrown knife in the calf. Told that Soga is worthless and deserves death, Koichi keeps running for a crowded street. Stendhal, admiring the intent while despising its object, tastes a drop of Koichi's blood and drops them both.

He advances to finish the pair, promising that nobody rescues men like Soga, and Knuckleduster lands between them announcing that he is here.

Stendhal claims kinship, two men walking a brutal righteous road. Knuckleduster rejects the comparison outright: he is a hero of justice, and the other man is a lunatic with a blade. He then explains why Stendhal cannot win, since wide sword arcs are readable and closing the distance invites his fists, and lays his grappling wire on the ground as a handicap, promising an attack the instant it is crossed. Stendhal lunges to overwhelm him with speed, framing it as crossing a line the way a hero would. Knuckleduster simply steps over the wire himself and shatters the man's nose with one punch. He never claimed the rule applied to him.

Holding the cracked mask, Knuckleduster tells Koichi that people who put on a second self grow arrogant, discard caution and conscience first, and come back to earth once the mask breaks. Choking on blood, Stendhal says he understands now, springs up, trades knife blows, and cuts Knuckleduster while being blocked. Perched on a building, he declares that the worst people are not villains but phonies who fake resolve they never had, licks the blood off his blade to paralyze his opponent, thanks him for the clarity, and vanishes.

Pop Step drops in with first aid. Knuckleduster waves off concern and directs her to Soga, whose gashes she treats with visible distaste. Soga asks whether Koichi is right in the head, given how he was treated, and she flushes and calls it ordinary stupidity, which Soga notices.

In a dim apartment, Stendhal bleeds over a sink and inventories what he lacks: power, speed, tactics, weapons, and above all resolve. Kuin needles him from the wall, so he throws the knife into her covered eye and she drops. In the quiet he slices off his ruined nose, exposing the cavities, and studies the cracked mirror with satisfaction, deciding his face is now the persona and no mask is required. Smearing blood along the stairwell wall, he settles on his direction: a faceless figure colored by the trail he spills, so that his stains lead the world onward. Behind him, Kuin rises and works the knife loose, her worker bees having caught the blade. She calls him a narcissist, declines to retaliate, and admits she is enjoying herself.

Stendhal wipes out the Abegawa Tenchu Kai's executives using Bloodcurdle and blood samples supplied by Kuin Hachisuka.

Kuin forcibly transforms Soga Kugisaki into an Instant Villain with a swarm of Trigger-loaded bees, triggering a fight Koichi cannot talk down.

Knuckleduster defeats Stendhal by exploiting his own handicap rule, wrecking his nose and splitting the mask open, and lectures Koichi on the danger of men who hide behind personas.

Stendhal severs his nose as proof of resolve, abandons the mask entirely, and stabs Kuin in the eye, though her bees keep the wound from killing her.

Adapted from chapters 9.5, 10, and 11 of the Vigilantes manga, the episode belongs to the Stendhal arc and moves between Naruhata's tavern, the Abegawa headquarters, and the Naruhata Disaster Medical Center.

Several passages are trimmed. Rojiya's backstory disappears, along with his habit of tearing up manhole covers to use against rival gangs, and the narration over the Abegawa slaughter is dropped. During Soga's breakdown the flashback of his class laughing at him is removed, replaced by dialogue about being mocked for his looks after a fight.

Other beats are altered or expanded. The nurse now interrupts as Moyuru uses his Quirk and sets off the fire alarms rather than as Rapt asks for a light. Moyuru visually transitions into Endeavor during the comparison. Kuin produces the Trigger vials from her pocket instead of a briefcase. Soga's Instant Villain form gains the ability to fire his spikes. Stendhal pictures All Might while speaking of heroic resolve mid-lunge. His swarm transformation of Soga, his scuffle with Knuckleduster, and the removal of his nose all run longer, and the mirror shot afterward is considerably more graphic, with the reflection showing his exposed nasal cavities.